Luke 4:1-13

Thursday morning I heard the God Squad, Fr. Tom Hartman and Rabbi Mark Gellman, talk about the movie, "The Passion of the Christ," which they had seen together on opening night.

Fr. Tom said, "This is our story as Christians. This is what it is. Someone has finally told it without softening it, without protecting us from the horror of it.

"The unstinting brutality all witnesses to how deep and strong and unstinting is God’s love for us. Some people saw only violence.

As a Christian, I saw only love. Of course, I repulsed by the violence-- and the humiliation.

But every stroke of the whip deepened my appreciation for the love that God has for us.

A God who was willing to go through that kind of torture and brutality and comes back with Love is a God that we can respect and trust. Our God is not detached!

A God who knows suffering intimately is not a God who is going to back off when we go through suffering in our own lives.

EG. of child with terminal, debilitating disease. "How are we going to be able to stand the pain in order to stick with her?"

That’s what this story offers. This is the power of Christianity.

"H. Richard Niebuhr, the Protestant theologian and ethicist and writer of the 1950’s-60’s said, that we had eviscerated God to make him comfortable to have around. We have imagined "a God without wrath who brings people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross." end quote.

We have polished silver crosses and filigreed gold crosses we wear as jewelry, but we are offended at a splintery wooden cross with nails and blood on it.

How did Jesus make it through? How did he not crack? not compromise, in view of all that pain and humiliation? !

How? Like an athlete, he had trained; Jesus had spent 40 days in the desert!. He had learned what it was like to be out alone on his own for weeks at a time. He knew what it was to deny his own needs; to be hungry; to face down fear; to have to rely totally on God. Jesus had prepared himself for his mission. He had used abstinence and fasting to DISCIPLINE himself.

I want to acknowledge the Rev. J. Harold McKeithen of Hidenwood Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, VA, for his fine article which formed the basis for this sermon.

I.

During his youth and young adulthood, Jesus’ understanding of his identity as the Messiah, as one who would inaugurate God's Kingdom through sacrificial service became clearer and clearer.

It culminated in his baptism by John in the Jordan River when Jesus was thirty years old.

Then, that understanding was put to the acid test during a forty day fast in the Palestinian desert.

Jesus had to decide whether the values he had chosen--or, perhaps more accurately, for which he had been chosen--were really the ones by which he was going to live.

The story of his temptations and decisions in the desert is one which the church has used for ages to usher in the forty-day season of Lent. It is a season which challenges us to self-examination and evaluation and to practice letting go of our own needs for a greater objective.

. Let us look at ourselves, then, in the light of Jesus' experience.

Notice at the outset that there is nothing in the text about the Devil "appearing" to Jesus. We read only of the Devil "speaking" to him. In other words, Jesus was alone there in the desert, and the voice which tempted him was an inner voice, just like that inner voice which whispers to you--enticing, tempting, cajoling, reassuring, scorning.

And the first thing that voice suggested to him was that he use this new power given him at his baptism to make himself more comfortable, for his own convenience.

Well, what’s wrong with that? We all do that.

Two things of which Jesus was acutely aware at the end of over a month in that rocky, barren wilderness were his own hunger and the hunger and poverty and misery of so many of his fellow Jews there in Palestine. The rounded stones all around on the ground had begun to look like round loaves of bread.

"Turn them into bread," the voice said. "Feed yourself. Feed others. Meet those physical and material needs of people which are so obvious. What could be more important than that?"

How vulnerable we all are to the tempter's suggestion that there is nothing so important or desirable as physical and material well-being!

Harold McKiethen was deeply involved with his former church in Charlotte, NC, in a church project to assist people in a small community in the interior of Haiti.

"Some of us were so gratified and excited about the impact which our project was clearly having in the areas of agriculture, nutrition, health, and hygiene that these areas became for us almost the whole point and purpose of the project.

It was one of the poor Haitian villagers who brought Pastor McKiethen and his congregation to sharp awareness that in their ministry there they were providing to him and his neighbors something even more important and more necessary than material assistance. Representing one of the twenty-three villages where our project work was going on, he spoke to representatives of their project committee who were there for an on-site inspection.

"In the name of Jesus Christ, we welcome you again to Croix-fer.

You have given to our villages so much, and we have nothing to give you except our gratitude and our prayers.

You, and all the Methodists of Charlotte church represent Jesus Christ to us. You have brought us to his salvation."

We know by the story of the feeding of the 5000 that Jesus was glad to give people actual bread.

But some months after his experience in the desert, some people came to Jesus and asked him to give them bread. They reminded him how their ancestors had received manna in the desert in the time of Moses.

Jesus said, "What Moses gave you was not the bread from heaven; it is my father who gives you the real bread from heaven. For the bread that God gives is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

And they said, "Sir, give us this bread always."

And he replied, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry."

What it comes down to is this. If all you have is the physical bread, then no matter how much of it you have, the time will come when you will be so desperately hungry that you will not know what to do. But, if you have Christ, the living bread, in you, you will have a source of nourishment and strength no matter what your physical and material circumstances may be.

It is just as Jesus said to the Tempter, "Man cannot live on bread alone."

II. The second temptation came from a different direction.

Jesus began to think about how he could be effective in getting God’s message to as many people as possible.

. He heard a voice say, "With your power, you could become a king…not only of Israel, but of Jordan and Syria and Lebanon—possibly Arabia, Babylon and Egypt! Jesus knew he was God's anointed One, born for the purpose of establishing the divine kingdom on earth. Why not do whatever was necessary to gain the power and influence needed to accomplish that purpose? What better way to bring people to God?!

Power! It is the only thing which is more tempting to human beings than bread, money, material wealth. To be on top! To be in control!

In the Bible, this is what led to the fall of humanity. The Tempter said to Adam and Eve, "Why should you be under God's control? Take control of yourself." And they did.

In Greek mythology, the same motif is there, the motif of hubris, the motif of mortals trying to usurp the power of the gods.

There is nothing like power for attracting people of the opposite sex. Powerful or influential men, at least, attract women like a magnet attracts pieces of metal.

Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, has said that power is the only real aphrodisiac, with money running a close second and good looks running a distant third.

"All you have to do to have all the power and influence you need," the Tempter said to Jesus, "is remember who is in control of things in that world down there and play ball accordingly.

Look. Whose values seem to be the most realistic," he continued; "mine or God's? Who's running things down here, those who play by God's rule or those who play by mine?"

"Come on," the Tempter says to the senior high guy, "all you have to do is feed her a line about how terrific she is and tell her you love her and she'll probably do anything you want her to do."

"Come on," he says to the preacher, "learn how to make people feel good by what you say from the pulpit and stay away from issues they are touchy about and you'll probably be able to move up to a high-steeple church."

"Come on man," the Devil says, "you know how to make your husband feel guilty and get your way in those battles that come up at home. Use every weapon you've got!"

The trouble is that power corrupts. In any hands, except God's hands, power corrupts.

Jesus knew that. He knew that paradise had been lost when old Adam said, "Mine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen!" And Jesus realized that now he himself was being sorely tempted to repeat that sin--in the name of God's kingdom!

He realized he could not do that and be the new Adam, leading humankind to regain paradise. He would have to teach people to say, "Our Father who art in heaven...thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever." And he would have to show how that meant living under God's power and embracing God's values of truth and honesty and sincerity and courage and gentleness and care for the oppressed.

You are free to live your life in the service of power, and control, or in the service of God.

But if you choose God, you cannot use and manipulate people for your own pleasure and purposes,

So to choose is salvation. To choose otherwise is to choose corruption.

Jesus said, "Worship the Lord your God and serve only him!"

So...Jesus had resisted the temptation to make the satisfaction of physical and material needs his only concern, and he had resisted the temptation to seek and use power the way it is sought and used in the world at large.

III. It was as though, at that point, the Tempter said, "Okay, you have beaten me. You have decided you will serve God only.

But maybe you had better find out whether God is really going to honor your commitment. Maybe you had better check out whether God is going to stand by you or not.

Test it out. Jump off a high place and see if he catches you like the Old Testament says he will."

This third and final temptation was the temptation to make commitment to God's way conditional upon God demonstrating that he would make it all work out without any undue difficulty.

Most of us would have no difficulty in deciding to tithe if we could be sure that God would provide the wherewithal for us to meet our other obligations.

Back in the early sixties there were a good many good people who would have been willing to take a public stand against segregation if they could have been sure that God would not let anything happen to their businesses or let their children be called names on their account at school.

There are a good many churches today that would be willing to open up their facilities to teenagers in the community if they could be sure the floor or the furniture wouldn’t be damaged.

Does that embarrass you? It embarrasses me.

It embarrasses me to consider the degree to which you and I do not have the grace or the courage to follow God on the basis of his loving care for us which has brought us safe thus far but want him to prove somehow or show us somehow that he is going to do it in the future.

Well, the pure and simple fact is that God can't and won't, because God may not give that protection in the future.

Early in the game, maybe as early as the temptation experience in the desert, Jesus saw where faithfulness to God's ways would lead.

The world would not tolerate this kind of obedience to a higher authority.

Jesus minced no words about it to those who thought that they wanted to go with him. "Let anyone who plans to follow me count the cost," he warned. God offers you no protection in return for your commitment to his Son and your investment of your time, energy, money and heart in his cause.

He does not offer you anything except

a peace that is beyond understanding

and a joy that is beyond pleasure

and a courage that is not crushed by pain

and a hope that it is not quenched by failure

and a life that continues through death.

Jesus said, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."

And when the Devil finished tempting Jesus, he left him. . . for a while.

So, here he is, alone in the desert, that marvelous man who, as the writer of Hebrews emphasized, was tempted in every way that we are.

The difference is that he gave in to none of them,

and we have given in to all of them;

and yet, the good news is

that by sincerely putting our trust in him as Savior and Lord we can begin, at least, to become like him.

OUTAKES

P. 3 American communities have been so hungry for the new payrolls and new revenues which come with industrial and business development that they have been willing sometimes to sacrifice health standards, environmental concerns, anything to get the new industries and businesses. American communities have been so hungry for the new payrolls and new revenues which come with industrial and business development that they have been willing sometimes to sacrifice health standards, environmental concerns, anything to get the new industries and businesses. But if we succumb to the temptation, we will, sooner or later, have to face the cost.

During the 1980s, as the ranks of the rich (if not famous) grew to record numbers in America, so did the ranks of the desperately poor grow even faster.

It took a Kepone disaster before people who live along the James River woke up to what can happen without stringent environmental protection measures.